Customer Reviews

The Boxer's Omen

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This Shaw Bros Horror film simply must be seen to be believe. It's not a martial arts film, but there are a few fight scenes with Bolo. The movie showcases gruesome black magic duels instead of kung fu action. Fans of surreal horror(The Beyond, The Viy, Evil Dead 2) will be pleased. There's all sorts of attacking spiders, monster bats, alligator monsters, flying heads and a demon woman. The effects will be laughable to some but the sheer crazed enthusiasm of them won me over. There is also quite a bit of gore, slime and real creepy crawlies. An eel is puked up in one scene. The Image dvd looks great and comes with a booklet detailing the history of the film.

There are movies that are entertaining for no other reason than that you just can't believe what you're watching on the screen. The Boxer's Omen is a phantasmagoria of grossness, questionable special effects, gawdy visuals and Buddhism that is so exuberantly bizarre I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. Part of the movie is a kickboxing revenge story, which is the only part of The Boxer's Omen that isn't insane, but the rest of it deals with the wildly hallucinatory conflict between Buddhists and practitioners of the dark arts.

The special effects are audaciously bad at times, particularly those involving animals. I swear that the bats and spiders in one part looked like plush toys, or something similar. For any of you who have seen The Beyond and marvelled at how fake the spiders looked in that movie, the ones in The Boxer's Omen are even more ridiculous. The special effects in this movie would surely bring the quality down a notch if the overall style wasn't so over the top. There is so much fantastic absurdity to behold that it's difficult to be distracted by any one thing.

The black magic in this movie is the source for most of the grossness. Whenever one of the dark priests casts a spell, they usually chew up all sorts of nasty things and spit them out, somtimes repeatedly. There's also one part where they slice open an alligator, toss its guts out on the floor and then stuff a corpse inside in order to raise it from the dead. I just watched Jungle Holocaust where an alligator gets sliced open and has its innards strewn about, so I think I've had enough of that sort of thing for a while.

Because this movie exists almost entirely in the realm of the supernatural, it doesn't always make very much sense. The protagonists are Buddhists, so maybe possessing knowledge about the religion will put some of the occurences in this film into perspective. Otherwise, the viewer can only go along for the ride and throw reason to the wind. I guess it is best classified as fantasy/horror with a small amount of martial arts thrown in. There's also a little T&A, for those so inclined.

If you have a difficult time suspending disbelief or like movies that make sense, you probably shouldn't watch this. I'd also recommend avoiding it if you find rampant, garish blood and gore disagreeable. Otherwise, it's worth experiencing at least once for the mindboggling weirdness alone.

It starts out as your standard revenge flick where Bolo cripples Lung Wei Wang(Return to the 36th Chamber) in the boxing ring and his brother(Ko Fei) swears to take revenge for him on Bolo. Well that isn't really what ends up happening. Well actually it does, but the director kind of gets lost in a bunch of black magic stuff and then Ko Fei finally fights Bolo again. Of course the director doesn't ecactly get lost because he obviously planned on making this a black magic movie but it is just weird how it starts off with a great action sequence, in fact, the only really good action sequence, and then we don't really get anymore. I can't say the movie was great but I still liked it a lot. It gets super sick and that just adds to the insanity that you are watching. I think the movie would have affected me more if I was Asian and grew up on these kind of stories but it was still nice to experience this unthinkable black magic stuff.

SMALL SPOILER ALERT HERE BUT JUST TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF WHAT YOU WILL BE WATCHING: these guys in the movie take a girl's dead body from a swamp that is actually located under their house, so they just open up the floor. After killing a huge crocodile and putting her in and sowing up the croc they take her out for their final steps of her rebirth and there are many sickening steps I didn't go over. The last step involves a guy taking a chomp out of a rotting dead chicken, eating other sick stuff and spitting it out onto a plate right after he puts it all in his mouth. He passes it to his friend who puts all this crap into his mouth, literally licking the plate to make sure he has it all. After chewing it up pretty well he adds a whole banana peel to his mystery mouthful and spits it out onto a plate. A 3rd guy re-eats the contents on the plate making sure he gets it all in his mouth. After chewing up a little bit he has a live chicken's anus cut off and sticks that into his mouth and chews it all up real good. So then they feed this to the girl. You probably don't believe me that this happens in a movie but I tell the truth.

No special feautes besides a still gallery and the same non subtitled trailers on the other Image DVD's. DVD quality is not perfect but pretty close. Also it is in a 16:9 format and not letterboxed but the 16:9 was how it is supposed to look since this is how the Shaw Brothers shot this one as they did for a lot of their movies in the 80's.

Excellent DVD of a great cult film. And don't worry about the language the previous review mentions. Considering the reviewer is from France, it's unlikely they've even seen this release to make a judgement on the quality of the disc, which is the best this film has ever seen in any form. No matter, by this time, Shaw Brothers Studios were dubbing and releasing their films in Cantonese and Mandarin in theaters at the same time. Considering there's at least three or more languages spoken in the film, the studio had their own dubbers, who usually were not the stars of the film anyway. So there's no "correct" soundtrack for this film, no matter what the "experts" will tell you. It won't affect you're enjoyment of the movie in any way.

"The Boxer's Omen" has been released only in VCD in HK (by IVL). So I was hoping that the R1 release from Image Entertainment on DVD would be a good means of seing it in perfect conditions.
Unfortunately the soundtrack is not the original Cantonese but Mandarin...
(Same problem with "The Super Inframan" from the same label.)

This movie is definitely not for everyone's taste. But for those who are keen on viewing cult movies, it is an extremely good choice. The director Kuei Chi-hung is noted for making cult movies, and The Boxer's Omen is one of his very best. A little warning, better avoid viewing this movie while you are eating, otherwise you may throw up upon seeing certain scenes.

First of all, I have seen more than my share of strange Japanese films. However, this is one of the weirdest, strangest, demented and oddest, [throw in any adjective that you like] films that I have seen. I thought the Japanese made some of the weirdest films around: And they do! but this one takes the cake. This Hong Kong film, by the Shaw Brothers, is one of the strangest I have ever viewed. Moreover, it is not for the weak of stomach. And if anything, it boasts some of the cheesiest special effects you are likely to view. Is this a great film? No! Is it a good film? Not really: Unless you are into extremely bizarre films. And after awhile viewing the film, you may not even care, as the film veers into so many strange areas that you wonder what in the heck you are watching. Also, don't expect too much from the special effects, as they are about some of the silliest you are likely to ever watch.

So what is the fascination with this film? Who knows. Some will like this film as it is a cult classic. For me, after sitting through the film I actually got to the point where I just wanted to see where the film was taking me. And it takes you everywhere. I could not figure out some of the Buddhist symbolism the film employs; but at some point I really stopped caring. Then there is the journey the film takes you on that really gets bizarre. With Buddhist monks fighting the forces of evil, the director takes the viewer on a really demented trip. The Shaw Brothers give the viewer one mind bending piece of cinema that goes everywhere and anywhere. Moreover, fans of weird films might like this excursion into dementia. For this is not a typical horror film, or martial arts film.

What starts out as a martial arts film, where a Thai boxer and Chinese boxer are fighting in a ring, then segues into a black magic film where everything goes. And I mean everything. As I was watching the film, I kept wondering what the script writer and director were thinking when they made this film. It never stops getting weird. And actually, weird is an understatement. This is a psychedelic mind trip that just keeps on getting stranger. The reviewer Morgoth has given a review of the film, and describes some of the strange parts of the film, however, he only scratches the surface. You have to see the film [or not] to believe it. Extreme caution is advised for those who wish to watch this film. It may be a cult classic, but it is very difficult to watch more than once. The film will not appeal to the vast majority of people, therefore, before buying, I advise that you rent it first.

It pains me to ever give a Shaw Brothers film such a negative review but 1 star was all I could muster... even after reading all the other well-written reviews stating why I should be giving it at least 4. This one truly suprised me. It contains martial arts, horror, gore, and the always enjoyable Lung Wei Wang (THE Master Of The Flying Guillotine himself) and Bolo Yeung (needs no clarification!)... so what went wrong? Probably the fact that everything I mentioned above is so poorly done or underutilized that your left with a mess of a movie and a look of dissapointment (or disbelief) on your face. You get a little fighting here and a little horror there but mostly you get really bad set pieces and special effects that make most of the generic Italian exploitation films from the same era look like documentaries! I don't know though? Maybe I was expecting too much (or maybe I should have been drunk) because I seem to be the only reviewer who didn't enjoy this? If you are looking for action, genuine chills, or even a movie to gross you out then this isn't the one... if you want something to watch with alcohol and friends this may be worth some laughs but even those won't last very long (try Bolo or Fearless Fighters instead for more enjoyment and near endless chuckles in those scenarios).